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Analyzing Poetic Devices: Robert Hayden's “Those Winter Sundays” and Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”
Introduction
Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays" and Theodore Roethke's "My Papa's Waltz"
are widely-anthologized, contemporary American poems. Both poems also are featured
in the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress' "Favorite
Poem Project," indicating Americans' love for these two powerful and moving
poems about father-son relationships.
In this lesson, students will study both the content and the form of these
two poems, closely analyzing how each poem's use of poetic devices helps to
convey and emphasize the poem's meaning. Not only will this lesson enable students
to analyze "Those Winter Sundays" and "My Papa's Waltz" in an in-depth way,
it will provide them with a deeper understanding of certain poetic devices and
the intricate relationship between a poem’s content and its form.
Guiding Question
- How do Robert Hayden and Theodore Roethke incorporate poetic devices to
convey meaning in "Those Winter Sundays" and "My Papa's Waltz"?
- How does the form of each poem relate to its content?
Learning Objectives
After completing this lesson, students will be able to
- Define and understand in context common poetic devices, such as alliteration,
consonance, and repetition.
- Discuss poetic meter and rhythm and its relationship to theme.
- Compare and contrast poems theme via active class discussion.
- Provide a well-supported, written analysis of the relationship between a
poem's form and its content.
Preparing to Teach This Lesson
- Review the lesson plan. Locate and bookmark suggested materials and other
useful websites. Download and print out documents you will use and duplicate
copies as necessary for student viewing.
- Students can access the poem and some of the activity materials via the
EDSITEment LaunchPad.
- Consider teaching students the EDSITEment-lesson "Preparing
for Poetry: A Reader's First Steps" to prepare students for poetry-reading
homework. For students who are less familiar with poetry, you may suggest
the "How to Read
a Poem" suggestions, available from the EDSITEment-reviewed Victorian
Web. Students might also benefit from the Poetry
Glossary via the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets website.
- Read the brief biography of Robert
Hayden from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern
American Poetry website and the biography of Theodore
Roethke from the EDSITEment-reviewed Academy
of American Poets website.
- Read the online version of Hayden's "Those
Winter Sundays"and the online version of Roethke's "My
Papa's Waltz" as a video clip (scroll down to locate the clip) from the EDSITEment-reviewed Library of Congress' Favorite
Poem project. You can also listen to the audio clip of Roethke's "My
Papa's Waltz."
- Browse the reader
letters about "Those Winter Sundays" from the Favorite Poem project, and
watch the reader
video about "My Papa's Waltz."
- Read the earlier
version of "Those Winter Sundays," available from the PBS series on poetry
"Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers," a link
from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website. The PBS lesson
that cites this earlier version is by Peter E. Murphy, a poet and teacher
who did this research on Hayden's drafts while participating in an NEH Summer
Institute.
Suggested Activities
1. First Steps: Reading and Comprehension
For many students, perhaps the most important first step in closely analyzing a poem is to hear and/or read the poem aloud. You might ask for one student volunteer to read "Those Winter Sundays," and then invite the class to listen to the audio clip of Roethke reading his poem "My Papa's Waltz."
You may want to focus students' attention on "Those Winter Sundays," perhaps reading the poem again before asking students the following introductory questions:
- What is this poem about?
- How would you describe the speaker's father and the relationship between
the poem's speaker and his father?
- How do you define the words "offices"
and "austere"?
(Definitions available via the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library).
Do these words seem appropriate to the poem? Why or why not
Now turn to "My Papa's Waltz," which you may wish to read again before asking students some similar introductory questions:
- What is this poem about?
- How would you describe the relationship between this poem's speaker and
his father?
- How would you compare this father/son relationship with the relationship
portrayed in the Hayden poem?
2. Analyzing Poetic Devices: Consonance, Assonance, and Repetition
Ask students to point out specific details from "Those Winter Sundays" that led them to their assessment of the poem's meaning and, specifically, their description of the father/son relationship. Concentrating on the first stanza, ask students which words stand out when they hear the poem. Words that they will probably mention include
blueblack cold,
cracked hands that ached
banked fires blaze
Ask students what they notice about these words. Some students will notice the recurring hard "c" sounds using the poetic device of alliteration. You may want to point out that alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a sequence of words and that repetition of consonant sounds other places in a sequence of words is also called consonance. Ask students to identify other recurring hard "c" or "k" sounds:
clothes
…black
cold
cracked
ached
weekday
banked
thanked
Have a volunteer to read this list of words, before asking the following questions:
- How do these hard "c" and "k" sounds (consonance) contribute to the mood
of this opening stanza?
- What effect does this example of consonance have on the speaker's characterization
of his father? Why or how?
- Ask students why they think, "No one ever thanked him."
- When you hear this stanza, what do these sounds inherently sound like (despite
the words' meanings)?
Some students will notice that these hard sounds mimic the sound of the fire
that the father has started to warm the house before he wakes his son. The hard
sounds also indirectly contribute to an impression of the father as, perhaps,
somewhat harsh despite the lack of any direct mention in this stanza of a harsh
father.
As an alternative activity, if students have access to a computer word processing
program, ask them to copy and paste the poem into the document and use the highlighter
and/or text coloring tools to highlight the alliteration and consonance in the
poem. If students do not have access to enough computers during class, consider
passing out copies of the poem and having them annotate the poem using highlighters
or pens.
Now read the first three lines from the earlier
version of "Those Winter Sundays," researched by Peter E. Murphy and available
from the PBS series on poetry "Fooling with Words with Bill Moyers," a link
from the EDSITEment-reviewed Modern American Poetry website (you may need to
scroll down the page to find the earlier version, or press Control-F and enter
"Those Winter Sundays" as the search term). (Note: you might
consider making full copies of the early version available to your students
in order to avoid scrolling through the lengthy website).
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the stiffening cold,
and then with hands cracked and aching.
Compare these lines to the final version:
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
Ask students the following questions:
- How is this earlier version different?
- What effect does the change from "stiffening cold" to "blueblack cold" have
on the poem and its mood and meaning?
- What effect does Hayden's change from "aching" to "ached" have on the poem?
What about his dropping the "and" that originally began line 3?
Now turn to the second stanza, and ask students to identify examples of consonance and assonance (repetition of vowel sounds). Discuss their examples in relation to the poem's content in the second stanza, and be sure to compare the final version to the earlier version. Ask students to discuss what Hayden might mean when he writes, "fearing the chronic angers of the house."
Ask students if this poem is written in a particular form. Some will notice that the poem is has some similarities to a sonnet, with a total of 14 lines (the earlier version has 15 lines), and concluding with the "turn" that usually appears in the traditional last two lines of a sonnet. Note, however, that the poem lacks the rhyme scheme and rhythm of a sonnet. Review the earlier version, and ask students to consider the effect the formal changes had on the poem:
- What are the biggest differences between the earlier version and the final
version?
- Note the change of "What did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?"
to "What did I know, what did I know/of love's austere and lonely offices?"
What effect does the repetition have on conveying the speaker's feelings toward
his father?
- What effect does the final version's "turn" (the last two lines) have on
the poem's meaning at large? Does the earlier version have the same effect?
Why or why not?
Students might note that the repetition conveys a greater sense of regret that the speaker never thanked his father or appreciated, until presumably later, his father's manifestations of love. The sense of longing is clear after the father's perhaps distant yet constant show of affection (building the fire, polishing the shoes).
3. Analyzing Poetic Devices: Meter and Rhyme
Revisit "My Papa's Waltz." Ask students the following questions:
- How is this form different from that of "Those Winter Sundays"?
- How would you describe the meter of each line? What does this meter sound
like?
- Have students count out the beat on their fingers, marking the beat on their
desks, and then ask whether any lines have more than six syllables (beats).
- What effect do these seven-syllable lines have on the poem?
Some students should pick up on the rhyme scheme, the shorter lines, the consistent stanzas, and fairly consistent meter within each line. The beat that students might hear is an iambic trimester, which mimics the triple time (three beats) of a waltz. If students have difficulty with this idea, remind them to reconsider the title of the poem. Some students, when measuring out beats, may notice that lines 2, 4, 10, 12, and 14 have an extra syllable. The extra syllable emphasizes the father's missteps and the fact that "Such waltzing was not easy." Point out the content of the seven-syllable lines and relation to the lines' form.
Ask students to map the rhyme scheme, which follows the pattern of abab, cdcd, efef, ghgh. Ask students the following questions:
- What effect does the rhyming have on the poem?
- How does the rhyming influence the mood of the poem?
- What is the relationship between the rhyme (sing-song like) and the content
(characterization of the father)? What do you think of the contrast?
If the class hasn't already watched the reader video about "My Papa's Waltz," available at the Favorite Poem Project, show it to them if possible. If you do not have video capability, ask students to consider the theme of "My Papa's Waltz." William Van Fields, the man who discussed this poem in the video, argues that the poem presents a father who is kind and fun, and he contrasts this with the reaction of his schoolteacher and classmates, who thought the poem was about an abusive relationship. Ask students to argue one side or the other, and require that they use evidence from the poem's text (content and form) to back up their claims.
Assessment
- Have students choose either "Those Winter Sundays" or "My Papa's Waltz." Ask them to write a two-page analysis of the relationship between the form of the poem, in its published version, and its content/meaning. In their essay, students should reflect on how their small group's prose version of the poem sheds light on the effect(s) of the true poems' use of form.
- Ask students to use some of the poetic devices they learned about to write a poem about one of their parents. Students should turn in a short essay to accompany the poem explaining their choices.
Extending the Lesson
Divide the class into 4-5 small groups. Have each group work together to turn each poem into a prose poem. Encourage students to replace words with synonyms and to use direct subject/verb prose sentences. They should eliminate stanzas, writing each poem as one block paragraph. Have each group read their revised prose poems aloud. For the literary background and significance, see the Academy of American Poet's definition of a prose poem.
Wrap up the class by discussing students' responses to the following general question:
- Are the prose poems as powerful as their original counterparts? Why or why not?
- What is the relationship between a poem's form and its content?
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